The Australian Medical Association (WA) sought to revise the EBA on-call and recall provisions for doctors in training (DiTs) and senior doctors to reflect the current clinical work practices and patient requirements within health service providers (HSPs).

Currently, WA Health’s approach to paying overtime, on-call and recall is consistently inconsistent.

The AMA (WA) is seeking clarity in the EBA for medical practitioners and HSPs – outlining for doctors when they are entitled to incidental overtime and when a recall should be paid. Presently, not all HSPs pay recall for time abutting the end of a rostered shift when the practitioner is rostered to on-call.

Further, a rigid interpretation of the state-wide service on-call provisions has resulted in HSPs refusing to recognise recalls as such, given a practitioner’s name did not appear on the state-wide roster. This places practitioners in an unacceptable ethical dilemma, which the health system will always win.

Those practitioners will always take the call and provide a clinical service, whether their name appears on a roster or not – patients would suffer otherwise.

The current provisions are ambiguous and unclear. All parties would benefit from a more thoroughly drafted clause. The AMA (WA) also hoped to resolve outstanding disputes without having to seek litigious solutions.

Nothing.

Indifference – despite the mutual benefits, WA Health has no interest in discussing the matter further in the context of negotiations.